EURO-TURKS

This week for the class we’re going to cover 2 articles, one from Levent Soysal ‘Beyond the “Second Generation”- Rethinking the Place of Migrant Youth Culture in Berlin’ and the other one is from Daniela Merolla ‘“Migrant Websites”, WebArt and Digital Imagination’, and also a book co-written by Ayhan Kaya and Ferhat Kentel, ‘Euro-Turks: A Bridge or a Breach between Turkey and the European Union?’. You may purchase it from here.  

Both Kaya and Kentel are Professors from my ex-university. I had the chance to take the courses from Ferhat Hoca and as an expression of my gratitude I want to focus on the book at this post.

The book is in general is an attempt to challenge the stereotypical representations of the Turkish migrants in Europe in the eyes of both the homeland and the host countries. They used the name 'Euro-Turks' as its common tendecy that these people were categorized unlike their heteregonity in terms of their difference in economic, political, cultural,ethnic and religiousity.  The book is a comperative study of 'Euro-Turks' both in France and Germany. Below I'll point you out some highlights from the book.

It is commonsense acceptance that the migrants are highly interested and informed with the politics of the motherland country but not in tact with the host country. But the quantitive research showed that they in Germany by 42% and in France by 50 % percent of Euro-Turks were not interested in mainland’s politics. Again their preference of using voting right in homeland elections is low, unlike commonsense suggests, which is 25 % and 8 % respectively. These all shows that the Euro- Turks being intact with the home country in their civic participation is a more like a myth as the above data suggests at least in terms of their political liability.

Another striking example is about the data about the perception of the most important problems of Turkey, where attendants could vote for more than one item. Here the 2 most rated items vary, also in terms of density, too. That is where in Germany the highest rated problem of Turkey was ‘democracy and human rights’ by around 25 %, the second highly rated item was ‘ corruption, nepotism and clientalism’ which was rated by 20 %.  Where in France the top rated item was ‘corruption, nepotism and clientalism’ again voted by 20 %, this was followed by ‘suppression made to the religious people in the name of laicite’ which rated a bit less than 20%. The difference in the items highly rated I think may be can be due to the effect of the host country over these immigrants. That is their perception is effected and so is shaped by the host countries vision and their status there.

There are many interesting data like these in the book which gives the general idea of the Turkish migrant residents in both Germany and France.   

Another eye catcher from the book is about the citizenship policies; whether its about integration or assimilation. We know that Germany and France do come from different governmental institutional traditions, one hand it is the romantic cultural thought equalizing all cultures inline where at the other one is bases on the material civilizing ideal. With such thinking Kentel and Kaya sketched out a rubric of different types of assimilation and integration for the case of Euro-Turks in Germany and France based on Gordon’s (1964) definition of seven different assimilation and integration forms.

Another important aspect is about Turkish media booming the Euro-Turks. In the book we see that the Notion of Ulf Hannerz ‘habitats of meaning’ is used to explain the stiuation of the local migrant community. That is ‘TV and print media have an important impact on the formation of our habitats of meaning. Just as some people may share much the same habitats of meaning in the global ecumene, others may have rather distinct and localized habitats of meaning’. The mainland turkish media giants has up to a point have the power of shaping the habitus of meanings of the Euro-Turks. The media companies select and telecast the shows, moveis, etc. which they think will be enjoyed by the Euro-Turks was published by the companies under a seperate channel with the heading added ‘EURO’ to their Turkish cast names, such as if the name of the channel is Show TV, it is aired as Euro Show in Europe, etc.

Although with the highly concentrated usage of internet the importance and the locality factor is open to question from now on.

At this point I would like to open a parenthesis for those who enjoy media/cultural studies and have an interest in Iran. I’ve just remembered an article which I’ve read back in my undergrad studies a book by Hamid Naficy, ‘The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television inLos Angeles’. I think the book is a good and relatively easy reading which deals with the role of the media in the formation of the American- Iranian identity. 

I’ll soon finalize this entry not to make the post longer enough to bore you with the content J

I think the book of Kaya and Kentel is rather mind clearing. That is it gives you a sense of the state of the Euro-Turks for cases of Germany and France. Although I don’t generally favor the quantitative research in social sciences, I think at this point some are especially useful to have a picture which at some points contradicts with the commonsense prejudices. Also the comparison factor that the book offers is important because it raises the questions and understanding the importance of local conditions and the tradition of governance of the host country and how it effects the compliance and the acts of the immigrant.